


Spider-Sitting

by Paradoxicalblueberry



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Babysitter Peter Parker, Blood, But nobody dies I promise, Date Night Gone Wrong, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Happy Ending, Irondad, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Whump, Swearing, Tony Stark Angst, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Whump, Worried Tony Stark, assassination gone awry, child endangerment but everything is fine I promise, mentions of injury, older Peter Parker, older michelle jones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-30 23:26:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19413640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paradoxicalblueberry/pseuds/Paradoxicalblueberry
Summary: Peter is babysitting young Morgan while Tony and Pepper are out for the evening but some assassins didn't get the memo. Peter's protection mode: engaged





	Spider-Sitting

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this before Endgame and didn't want to change stuff. Nothing like a little whump amiright? Also, stuff at the beginning that is bold and italicized is a flashback.

“Peter!”

The words echoed slowly through his ears, mostly drowned out by the ringing. 

“PETER!”

He drew up the will to open his eyes, as hard as it was, only to see a world of fiery red pain.

“Peter, can you hear me?!”

**_“Petey?” He loved it when little Morgan said his name. Her voice was so innocent and beautifully melodic. He went over to her bed after cleaning up the toys on the floor._ **

**_“Morgan,” he sang lightly in a sing-song. “Your parents will be home soon,” he reassured the child as he bent down to pick her up._ **

**_“Mommy?”_ **

**_“Yes, Mommy will be here soon.”_ **

“Peter, are you all right?!” Tony’s blurred face came into sight as he shook the boy’s shoulders. Peter let out a groan that was meant to be words, as he blinked sluggishly. 

**_“You’re such a little troublemaker,” Peter chuckled as little Morgan peeked out from behind the small childrens' easel with a giggle. “You know what?” he announced dramatically, “I seem to have lost Morgan. I just can’t find her anywhere. Mr. Bear, do you know where she went?” He asked the plush teddy bear lying on the floor._ **

His vision cleared and saw with horror that Tony’s hands were stained with blood. 

“Mrrrr. Stark?”

“Pete, Peter, can you hear me?”

“. . . Blood?”

Peter pointed with his leaden feeling arm but saw blood on his hand, too.

**_“No? Well then I’m just going to track her down myself, aren’t I?” he said to himself, smiling at the giggles from the corner._ **

**_The room was still a mess from the afternoon babysitting. He decided to clean up before he went in fake search of her._ **

“What happened?! Pete, where’s Morgan?!”

**_“Morgan?” he sang again. “Where are you?” The kitchen was quiet except for Peter’s light footsteps. More giggles came from the child’s room but he loved to play along. He turned out the lights and grabbed the fluffy white blanket draped over the sofa in the family room, ready to ensnare any youngster to run into him with warmth._ **

Peter’s eyes slipped shut before he could answer and his body was racked with violent convulsions. 

**_“I’m gonna find you sooner than later, Morgan. You can’t hide from ol’ Petey.”_ **

“Pep, I need help! When’s the ambulance--”

“They said any minute,” Pepper said through hysterical tears as she frantically fidgeted with her hands. “Morgen . . . she’s---”

“She probably just hid when she heard the gunshots.” Tony’s voice was heavy with fear, dragged down by the lump in his throat. He forced his composure, not letting tears of his own to spill over. “But I need you now, okay? I need you to hold this,” he motioned to the red sodden white blanket placed just below Peter’s ribs. 

**_“Gotcha! I got you now.” Morgan wriggled with laughter in the blanket she was entangled with as Peter swept her off the floor and plopped her on the couch to tickle her little toes._ **

Peter’s body suddenly stopped convulsing. Pepper shot Tony a panicked look as he pressed his ear against Peter’s chest. Everything was silent.

**_Peter’s attention jerked away from squirming Morgan and towards the curtain drawn window of the small house. He could never mistake the sound of guns cocking._ **

Tony’s breath hitched.

**_Morgan stopped laughing._ **

No.

**_He grabbed her and held her tight as he ran down the basement stairs and opened a cabinet under the television._ **

No!

**_“Stay here, do you understand me?!”_ **

Tony began CPR.

**_“Whatever you do, don’t open the door for anyone except me.”_ **

Peter’s head lolled with every compression.

**_“Don’t open the door, Morgan. Stay quiet.”_ **

Tony couldn’t hold his sobs any longer.

**_“I’ll be right back. Stay quiet.”_ **

Red and blue lights lit up the room through the broken window accompanied by the wail of sirens. 

**_“I’ll be right back.” Peter gave a reassuring smile._ **

“Sir, you need to give us some room.”

**_Morgan fought back her shrieks when she heard the thunderous gunshots from upstairs, only huddling tighter in the corner of the cabinet with her ears covered._ **

“Sir, Sir!”

“You have to do something,” Tony yelled. “He’s dying!”

“Sir, let us do our job.”

There was a pause. Not just a hesitation in the conversation, but a hitch in time. He looked at Peter. His kid. He was his responsibility. His duty. His _son_. And he was dying. What about all the times the kid saved him? He couldn’t even save his own son, how was he going to be a good father? How was he supposed to live a life without Peter in it? Without his awkward smile? Without his bravery? Without his little quirks? How was the world going to go on without Peter? Without Spider-man?

Time resumed and Tony collapsed into Pepper’s arms, weeping erratically, as she tried to soothe him, rubbing circles in his back, when a small voice brought him back to the present.

“Daddy?”

Tony looked up. Morgan’s tiny silhouette stood in the doorway.

“Oh thank god!” He ran to the toddler and picked her up in a tight hug, refusing to let anything take his other kid. “Sweety, are you all right?” Tony asked, his words muffled by her bushy hair. She nodded as Pepper reached out to hold Morgan, but she squirmed to be put down and ran into her room. Pepper ran in after her. Tony’s attention drifted back to Peter and the frenzy of paramedics around him.

His breaths came faster and harder while his feet stumbled him backward. He ran his hands through his hair compulsively and squeezed his eyes shut, only for his eyelids to be stained with Peter’s bloody and bruised face looking up at him, frightened and pale, lifeless. 

He slid down to the floor, back against the wall, and held his knees with rigid arms with his thoughts already spiraling. Peter was dying and he couldn’t do a thing to stop it. He was helpless. It was his fault. If he had never left, Peter would be at home, or hanging out with his friends, or on a date, or talking on the phone with---

May.

Nobody’s told her.

He pulled out his phone. What was he going to say? He could barely bring himself to look at the profile picture of her and Pete in front of the green spring leaves from only a few years before. He had just graduated from college when Tony took that picture. 

“Is Petey going to be ok?” Morgan whimpered, leaning her face into her father’s shoulder while she clutched an armful of stuffed animals she got from her room. He didn’t answer, only hugged her close as the medics hauled Peter out of the dark house on a stretcher. There was a breath of despair in the air, a sense of surrender that made his heart tighten in his chest. 

Morgan looked up at Tony, her big green eyes filling with worry for her father. She’d never seen him like this. 

“We played hide and seek. I lost, only because I wanted to be found. I like Petey’s hugs. He’s always so warm . . . and smells like hot cocoa.” She paused, racking her brain for other things to say. Her dad always cheered up when she talked about her babysitter. “We made cookies, well, he did most of it, but we ate them for dinner with ice cream. Then we---”

Tony shuddered with his silent sobs, his head in his hands as tears dripped from the tip of his nose. Morgan backed away slightly.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she apologized quickly, clearly distressed. “I won’t eat sweets for dinner again, I promise. Don’t be mad. _Please stop crying._ ”

She jumped at the hand on her shoulder and looked up at her mother.

“Honey?” Pepper addressed Tony. “They’re taking Peter to the hospital. Do you want to go with them?” Morgan looked around the cold room and back to her dad still crying into his hands. 

“Here,” she said matter of factly, placing one of her plush kittens on Tony’s lap before running off.

The medics were about to close the doors to the vehicle when Morgan clambered up onto the rippled metal floor. She ignored the protests and walked cautiously up to Peter. His eyes were closed, one already turning purple with a bruise, and a streak of dried blood ran down the side of his swollen face. His neck was in a bright yellow brace and his shirt was partially cut off. Everyone in the ambulance paused as she approached the stretcher, looking down at her teddy bear. 

It was the same teddy bear that Peter gave her when she was sick with pneumonia, though she barely remembered the weeks she spent in the hospital for it.

She laid the bear close to his cheek and patted its head before giving Peter a kiss on the forehead.

“Thank you, Petey,” she whispered in his ear then finally let herself be ushered out of the ambulance. 

* * *

“Daddy! He’s awake. He’s awake! Uncle Bruce told me.” Morgan tugged on Tony’s pant leg trying to get him to move faster down the hallway before eventually giving up and running to the headquarters’ infirmary without him. They’d been staying there while their house got repaired and Peter had been moved there from the hospital a day earlier. 

“PETEY!”

“Hey, kiddo,” Peter said with a smile that lit up his face as she ran into the white-walled, sterile room flooded with the late morning sunlight. He had bandages peeking out from under the blankets that wrapped around his torso and shoulder. The cut above his brow was stitched up and the swelling around his eye had reduced. 

Before he could react, she flung herself onto the hospital cot, bringing out a stifled grunt from Peter that turned into a low chuckle as she accidentally kneed him in the gut trying to lay in the crook of his arm. He did what he could to make room for her and eventually, she found a spot and settled down. 

“How’re you doing, kid?” Tony asked as he walked in, hiding the guilt that weighed on his heart with the smile.

“I’m doing great!” Morgan answered in a chipper voice, making Tony roll his eyes with a laugh.

“I was talking to the other kid. Come on down from there.” 

Morgan began to pout.

“Oh, she’s okay here, Mr. Stark,” Peter assured with a shrug, Morgan’s smile returning. Tony didn’t even protest at being called _Mr. Stark_ anymore. He knew it was just habit by now. “I’m fine. And I’m not a kid anymore, I’m twenty-six. _I’m literally engaged_.”

“What?!”

“Yeah, I was going to tell you when you and Pepper got home on Saturday. I popped the question on Friday night. Michelle said yes,” Peter answered with a beaming smile.

“That’s wonderful, Pete!” The guilt only grew and Peter recognized it, his smile fading. After Thanos, he was always able to tell when Tony blamed himself for something.

“Hey, the important thing is that we’re all okay.”

“But you’re _not_ okay, Peter. They were looking for me and they shot you in the stomach and you almost died!” Tony snapped, startling Morgan. Peter was taken aback.

“Morgan, why don’t you go play with your Uncle Rhodey. I need to talk with your dad,” Peter whispered in her ear. She gave him a pleading look but silently admitted defeat, slid off the bed, and left with a quick glance back at the two watching her.

“I said I’m fine. Now stop blaming yourself for everything that happens because it’s not your fault.”

“I watched as you bled out in my living room, Peter!”

“And you saved me! If anything, I should be thanking you. Stop apologizing for things you have nothing to do with. Your family needs you. You, Tony Stark. Not a guilt-filled shell of you,” Peter sighed. “ _I_ need you.”

“I just never want anything to happen, to you or Pep or Morgan. I feel like if I hadn’t become Iron Man, I . . . I-I wouldn’t be constantly putting my loved ones in danger,” he murmured.

“And how many people would have died without you? I certainly would have---”

“Justin Hammer wouldn’t have had the tech to attack the Expo, though,” he said, looking down at his shoes.

Peter shook his head, “I’m not talking about the Expo. You saved all of New York from the Chitauri and the bomb, Mr. Stark,” Tony looked up at the man in the bed with waning eyes, remembering the boy he used to be. Remembering the day they met, the day they first spoke to each other, all the times when he saved the day, and the day he died. What was he supposed to do?

“Tony, you saved the entire universe, so don’t you _dare_ say that that wasn’t enough. It _breaks my heart_ every single time because you have done enough. You have saved enough people. You have spared enough lives. You have lived more than anyone and you’re still kickin’. So don’t you _dare_ think you are worthless because some of us get caught in the door. We are thankful to have known you at all, you know that?”

Silence filled the room, replacing conversation, the only sound being the constant beeping from the heart monitor, and Tony turned around to leave when Peter spoke again.

“I used to call you ‘Mr. Stark’ because it was the line that separated family from friend.” Tony stopped but didn’t look back at Peter. “I needed to subconsciously keep you becoming a father to me. I knew what you did. I knew you put yourself in jeopardy all the time. I knew you were self-sacrificing. And I couldn’t lose another father, Tony. And now…” He shrugged, “I’m willing to take the risk _. Are you?_ ”

* * *

“Hey, thanks for the bear,” Peter cooed, reaching for the stuffed animal from the nightstand with one hand and playing with Morgan’s hair with the other. She was back laying on the cot with Peter with a couple books for them to read together. 

“Can I have it back now that you’re done with it?” 

“What?” He gasped overdramatically. “You mean you want _me_ , your dear old hurt pal, to give back your gift?”

“Yes,” she laughed grabbing the bear from Peter’s hand. “And I never said it was a gift. It was a _loan_ for good luck. I knew he would protect you.” Peter smiled as she nuzzled closer into his side as he continued to read to her. 

A couple hours into the afternoon, Michelle came to visit. 

“ _Tony Stark_ ,” she announced, seeing him at the main entrance and greeted her with a hug.

“How’ve you been? I heard the big news.”

“Yeah,” she grinned. “Not bad, not bad. You?” 

Tony just chuckled nervously, reaching up to rub his neck and comb through his quickly greying hair with his fingers. 

“How is he?”

“He says he’s fine,” Tony answered with a shrug at Michelle’s dubious glare. “I was just about to check on him now, actually. Your welcome to stay for dinner. We’re ordering pizza for everyone,” he offered. She shook her head with a smile as they walked together through the compound, saying hello to all the Avenger’s they passed. 

“Morgan, sweety. It’s---” Michelle shushed Tony mid-sentence at the sight of the man and child sleeping peacefully in the cot accompanied by the slow beeps of the monitor and soft snoring. The scene made both of their hearts melt. 

Michelle walked up to her fiance and kissed his forehead. 

“Oh honey,” she muttered, gently stroking his hair while she picked up the book laying on his chest and set it on the nightstand. He stirred but continued his slumber. Tony noticed Morgan’s teddy bear on the linoleum floor and bent down to grab it. He gave it a curious stare before tucking it back into his daughter’s arms, and not without a kiss on her cheek.

Michelle turned to Tony, a pleased smirk across his face. 

“So pizza?”

“Sure.”


End file.
